Gods of Drinen

http://crypt-of-cthulhu.com/godsofdrinen.htm

The Gods of Drinen

by Gary Myers
copyright 1985, 2005 by Gary Myers reprinted by permission of Gary Myers
Bearing before him the emblem of his office, the ankh-headed staff of a priest of the Elder Ones, Bel came to the temple of M lok to slay the temples god. In the name of the Elder Ones he came, for it was they who had decreed the death of their greatest rival in Drinen, it was they who had appointed Bel the executor of their decree. But it was he who must slay the god or die in the attempt, and he had little hope that he would slay the god. He knew that the priests of M lok would not hinder him, for they had all locked themselves into their cells at sunset, and they would not venture out again before dawn. But he also knew that it was for fear of their god who walked in his temple by night. And that was not comforting knowledge in a temple so full of darkness as this one, with so many columns in it for a god to lurk behind. The only light was that of the stars which came in through the front door behind Bel. The columns stood about in it like ghosts. Only once in all that darkness did he see anything like a glimmer of hope, and that was the candle burning before the door of the temple vault. That forbidding door, black with age and studded with iron nails, was the last barrier between the temple and its god, yet no one guarded it. Only that one small candle stood before it, as if its light had power to hold more than the darkness at bay. It had not always been so. Once the priests had guarded their god as jealously as a miser guards his gold. This Bel had good reason to know, for he himself had spent more than one night guarding that door, a dutiful priest of M lok. Three years ago the young priest of the Elder Ones had never heard of M lok. But within two years of the night his priests smuggled him into the city, and hid him in the vault of the abandoned temple across the way from the temple of the Elder Ones, within two years his cult became the most popular in Drinen. I do not know what there was in the cult of M lok to lure so many worshippers away from other cults. M aybe it was the novelty alone. Or maybe it was the evidence of the living god, more convincing than the dusty records of ancient miracles. But whatever it was, it was soon felt even in the temple of the Elder Ones. For the priests of M lok wore robes of silk and dined on plates of gold, but the priests of the Elder Ones wore only rags and starved when their begging bowls were empty. So Bel reminded his masters, the three chief priests of the Elder Ones, when he knelt before them in their audience hall and begged them to release him from his vow. All in white they were, those ancient sad-eyed priests, and their long white beards hung down to their sandaled feet. Each held in his right hand the ankh-headed staff that was alike the prop of his age and the emblem of his office. He begged them to release him from his vow, and they did not refuse him. It was natural for the young priest to wish to turn from the waning light of the old gods to the waxing light of the

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Gods of Drinen

http://crypt-of-cthulhu.com/godsofdrinen.htm

new. And it was natural for him to feel discouraged when his begging bowl was too often empty. But this was not the first time that a god had arisen to challenge the Elder Ones, and it would not be the last; and sooner or later the Elder Ones would answer the challenge, as they had always done in the past. M eanwhile their priests must be patient, for the Elder Ones would remember the faithful in the years of their greater glory. And if they would remember the faithful, they would not forget the faithless. So said the chief priests of the Elder Ones, trying to turn Bel from his disastrous course. But he would not be turned. Breaking the staff of his office over his knee, he cast the pieces at the feet of his former masters. Though Bel had sometimes guarded the door, he had never seen what lay behind it. But now, by the light of the borrowed candle, he saw that it was a veritable maze of stairs and corridors, a maze in which he might have hunted for hours for his quarry and still been no closer to finding him. He might have hunted for hours, but he formed a better plan. The floor was strewn with human bones, and wherever there was a choice of ways he chose the one where the bones were thickest, as the quickest way to the lair of the god if not to the god himself. But he grew sick to think where those other ways might lead, for he had guessed long ago that there were more ways out of the maze than the priests of M lok suspected. And he stepped very carefully over the bones, because their owners had all been known to him. He had not been a month in the service of M lok when the disappearances began. A priest disappeared from his cell in the night, and none who heard his departing screams could believe that he went of his own free will. They searched the temple high and low but no trace of him did they find. Only the vault they did not search, for the door was closely guarded and none had passed through it in either direction, as the two guards could attest. But when the guards themselves disappeared without even a scream to mark their passing, they chose rather to give up their search than to follow it to its logical conclusion. And then a few said openly what all must have known in their secret hearts, that nothing could touch the priests of M lok in the temple of M lok unless it were M lok himself. They said that M lok was angry with his priests for neglecting to provide him with the food he required, and that those who would find the missing priests must seek them in the belly of M lok. Later they said that the disappearances were more than one god could account for. Yet the disappearances were never so many as rumor made them, and some of the missing were so by choice to escape the doom of their fellows. Bel himself stayed as long as he dared, but the first night he heard that cautious rattling at his own door he decided that his true interests lay elsewhere. For it was better to starve with the Elder Ones than to be eaten by M lok. He confessed as much to his old masters, the three chief priests of the Elder Ones, when he knelt before them in their audience hall and begged them to take him back again. They had changed not at all in the year since he had left them, unless their beards were a little longer or their eyes a little sadder. He begged them to take him back again, and they did not refuse him. They were pleased to see the young priest turn from the destroying light of the false god to the preserving darkness of the true. And they were pleased to see him thus escape the wrath of the Elder Ones. But the pleasure they felt at his return was as nothing compared to the pleasure felt by the Elder Ones themselves. So pleased were they, that they wished to please Bel in his turn by bestowing upon him a singular honor. For three years they had suffered M lok to challenge their power. They

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Gods of Drinen

http://crypt-of-cthulhu.com/godsofdrinen.htm

would suffer him no longer. Today they had decreed his death, and tonight they would send him the executor of their decree. But Bel could not slay the god without a weapon. So they pressed into his nerveless hands the staff of a priest of the Elder Ones. And he saw, as the darkness closed around him, that it was his own staff they had given him, his own staff miraculously restored. The bones led Bel truly, for just when he had begun to despair of advancing any farther without disturbing them, the walls opened outward on either side of him to show him the lair he was seeking. He saw at once that it was the lair, by the size and shape of the large square room, by the four doors that opened in its walls, and by the altar of black stone that stood in the center of the floor. But mostly he saw it by the bones, the human bones that lay so thick upon the floor that no part of it showed between them. The room was otherwise empty. He crossed the floor with careful steps and set the candle down on the altar top. He had all but decided to take it up and try his luck in the maze again, when something rattled the bones behind him. He knew well enough what that something was, but his trust in the staff of the Elder Ones gave him the strength to face it. But when he saw what was standing behind him, reaching for his throat with strangely human hands, all the strength ran out of him. Only when he felt the touch of those hands upon his shrinking throat, only then did he find the strength to strike. He struck not once but many times, beating down the thrashing limbs to reach the soft body behind them. He continued to strike the lifeless body long after the limbs were still. But even in the moment of his victory he saw that it was hollow, saw it in the very outline of the dead thing at his feet. It was not the terrible mockery of the human form that showed it to him. It was not the underlying otherness that no outward form could ever wholly conceal. It was not even the unnatural number of arms and legs and heads, twice the number that anything remotely human ought to have. It was none of these things in themselves, but the conclusion he drew from all of them, that snatched the victory from his hands even as he reached to grasp it. The thing had died in the final stages of splitting itself in two. But it was not until he had raised his eyes from the prostrate horror that he realized the magnitude of his defeat. The brothers of the slain god had returned from hunting in the temple above to find him with the body of his victim. They stood around him in a ring on the edge of the failing candlelight, shaking with silent laughter that was worse than any threat. But Bel had already seen the worst. He raised in defiance the staff of the Elder Ones, the staff that would teach even them mortality. Only then did he understand the reason the gods were laughing. The Elder Ones had broken their staff a second time in two.

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